Nazi objects from WWII uncovered in Argentina

Argentinean federal police discovered original Nazi objects from World War II, including tools for Nazi medical experiments.

The objects were found on Friday in a hidden room of a house located in the northern part of greater Buenos Aires.

The objects are now in the custody of the justice who is tasked with investigating the find.

“We are too shocked, too touched by the impressive finding but also happy” to have made this find, Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, who defined it as: “the biggest seizure of archeological objects and Nazi pieces of our history,” said Tuesday in a statement accompanying a video published on her You Tube channel to show objects from the seizure.

The judge in the case is Sandra Arroyo Salgado, the widow of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who earlier this year visited Israel.

The judge imposed a gag order on the investigation so no further details were revealed. But the security minister said she will ask the judge that the objects be donated to the Holocaust Museum of Buenos Aires.

The Argentinean Jewish political umbrella DAIA will hold a ceremony next Monday to honor the Security Ministry and the federal police division that undertook the investigation.

The ministry also tweeted photos from the cache on its official Twitter account, including photos of the Nazi objects as well as Asian historical objects.

“The main hypothesis is that someone who was part of the regime entered into Argentina, because the amount of objects of the same style is difficult to find in private collections that can have one or two objects, but not of this amount and of this quality ” a police officer who was part of the nine-month investigation told Argentinean television.

The police officer said that some of the objects “were used by the Nazis to check racial purity.”

Nazi puzzles for kids also were discovered in the cache.

One suspect identified by the police is not in Argentina. There are Argentinean and non-Argentinean suspects being investigated about the case, but not further details have not been provided.

In June 2016, a collector from Argentina paid $680,000 for Nazi underpants and other memorabilia.

Argentina was a refugee for Nazis after World War II. Adolf Eichmann was captured in the northern area of Buenos Aires in 1960. Nazis war criminals Joseph Mengele and Erich Priebke also choose Argentina as a refugee.

Argentina has had an anti-discrimination law on the books since 1988 that covers such objects. Three years ago a Buenos Aires city court ordered a vendor of Nazi souvenirs and symbols to perform community service and take a course about the Holocaust.